Elemental Princes of Evil / Archomentals

[Pants]

So, with these hints of Miska and the Queen of Chaos, does that mean Dungeon and or Dragon may feature updated stats of the Spyder-Fiends?

I always liked them...

 

[Alzrius]

1. Assuming you use the Blood War and essentially the "ancient" history of the D&D multiverse, how old does that make the war between Law and Chaos? My temptation is to say "several thousand years" (probably tens of thousands), but then we've also got dinosaurs, and my temptation there is to imagine that the "world" of D&D (Oerth, for my purposes) is thus millions of years old, just like Earth. How do you guys square the apparent contradiction?

I go for the more ancient explanation. I mean, you say you want the Law/Chaos war to predate the Blood War, which is fine...so the Blood War itself only began a few thousand years ago? That doesn't make sense to me. Outsiders are beings that essentially live forever, and the Blood War began before many gods were around. Heck, we're talking about before mortals existed on the Prime at all...isn't that worth several million years?

Oerth has a history that stretches back more than just a few thousand years. Go back a few millenia, and the humans and such were still there. They were just disorganized tribes, but they were there. So were other races, such as the faranth (who dominated most of the Flanaess several millenia back; see "Deep Freeze" in Dungeon #83), and that seems to have been long before the Twin Cataclysms.

Or has the Blood War been going on for millions of years? Are folks like Orcus and Demogorgon millions of years old? Really? Isn't that a bit lame?

How exactly is that lame? For planar lords, "eons" is a term that gets tossed around quite a lot (though not in its literal billion-year definition...usually). These beings are archetypal, and older than most recorded history (though Orcus himself was a mortal once). Is it that much of a stretch to go back more than a few thousand years?

If you take the D&D multiverse as one cosmology (as I do), then you need much more than a few thousand years to fit in all the history. Jazirian and Ahriman, the ancient war with the Far Realm, the Law/Chaos War, the Blood War, the advent of mortals, the faranth empire on Oerth, the thri-kreen dominance of wildspace, the Twin Cataclysms, etc., all paint a picture of epic scope. Canonically, there's no reason you couldn't have all this take place in, say, a hundred thousand years, but that just seems to take some of the truly ancient, epic feel out of it.

I'm struggling with this stuff in my own campaign, and am curious to hear from other DMs who take their D&D nerdery as seriously as I do.

I guess I just don't see the problem with having the ancient history of the D&D universe being, well, ancient.

 

[Shemeska]

I likewise think that the only reason the Queen of Chaos is tanar'ri is that _everything_ was tanar'ri at the time of the Rod of Seven Parts boxed set. I therefore consider this open to interpretation. She is undoubtedly evil, and undoubtedly a demon, but I prefer to imagine her as one of the last remnants from an "Age Before Ages," a tentacled matriarch of a demonic line that is now all but extinct.

Well the Varrangoin and Shadow Fiends weren't Tanar'ri, nor were Kytons or Bezikira considered Baatezu. There were races of devils and demons of the time seperate from the Baatezu and Tanar'ri. *shrug*

I suppose you could go with her being a part of the Abyss that predates the arrival of/creation of the Tanar'ri. After all we had the Ancient Baatorians, so why not something similar for the Abyss (personally I like to think of Abyssal layers, some at least, as being nearly sentient beings of chaos and evil unto themselves).

1. Assuming you use the Blood War and essentially the "ancient" history of the D&D multiverse, how old does that make the war between Law and Chaos? My temptation is to say "several thousand years" (probably tens of thousands), but then we've also got dinosaurs, and my temptation there is to imagine that the "world" of D&D (Oerth, for my purposes) is thus millions of years old, just like Earth. How do you guys square the apparent contradiction? Or has the Blood War been going on for millions of years? Are folks like Orcus and Demogorgon millions of years old? Really? Isn't that a bit lame?

Millions of years. Maybe more. Since sentient life existed and their thoughts, beliefs and actions gave substance to the outer planes. At whatever age you want to place that at I figure.

I mean, in terms of 'ancient' we have beings like the Baernaloths in the Gray Waste that literally stepped out of the plane as it was still forming. You've got the Ancient Baatorians. You've got some of the more primordial denizens of the Abyss like Demogorgon, Pale Night, etc. We've got the rubble strewn across the layer of Pelion/Mithardir in Arborea that suggests a race of outsiders that predates the Eladrin or maybe even made them (and who created The Last Word or 'Dead Gods' fame).

I handle this in my own planar campaign as being in the order of millions of years and some of those beings have been around since time zero. When things are walking around who witnessed the birth of the many current gods and those before them even, a thousand years is nothing in the grand scope of it all.

My storyhour gives a pretty good take on my feelings on the matter. I delve pretty deep into the past, or my interpretation of it, fiendish and celestial prehistory, early Sigil, etc.

 

[the Jester]

1. Assuming you use the Blood War and essentially the "ancient" history of the D&D multiverse, how old does that make the war between Law and Chaos? My temptation is to say "several thousand years" (probably tens of thousands), but then we've also got dinosaurs, and my temptation there is to imagine that the "world" of D&D (Oerth, for my purposes) is thus millions of years old, just like Earth. How do you guys square the apparent contradiction? Or has the Blood War been going on for millions of years? Are folks like Orcus and Demogorgon millions of years old? Really? Isn't that a bit lame?

In my campaign, the Sun was ignited a million years ago by the main god of the setting (Galador). Before that there was darkness ruled by the terrible servants of Bleak (the main devil-figure of Galador's religion). There were people even then, but they were disorganized or enslaved by forces of darkness.

So there are at least two million-year-old gods imc, and I'm certain that their hosts are also, in large part, a million years old. There are also demons of corresponding age, and supposedly one dragon in the campaign world saw the sun's birth as well.

Hell, there are being imc that are billions of years old- beings that predate my world's multiverse.

 

[Gez]

Chronology in the Outer Planes is tricky. They are places made of thought and belief, so they were already ancients when they were being created, since they've always been thought of as eternal, atemporal places.

 

[Gez]

Hell, there are being imc that are billions of years old- beings that predate my world's multiverse.

You have the same idea in Lords of Madness, Aboleth are the survivors from a "previous world" and have seen several such worlds raise and die.

 

[Shemeska]

You have the same idea in Lords of Madness, Aboleth are the survivors from a "previous world" and have seen several such worlds raise and die.

In a similar vein, I've given hints in my campaign that when the Outer Planes were being formed that Sigil was already there and seemingly waiting.

I've also given hints that the progenitors of the yugoloths weren't formed with the Gray Waste so much as they were 'sent' depending on how you look at it (with something similar for possible guardinal progenitors)

 

[Endur]

I think Demogorgon might be millions of years old, as he's not really a humanoid demon. Likewise, the Elder Elemental God and Jubilex.

Orcus and other humanoid Devils/Demons are probably only as old as mankind.

Statwise, Complete Arcane has the Elemental Monoliths, that appear to be a 3.5 conversion of Monte's Imix (and the equivalent of the other princes) from RTTOE. Although personally, I would go ahead and add a Divine Rank of 0 to the Monoliths to really get the flavor of the various elemental princes. Primary game play difference would be making the Elemental Princes mostly immune to magic (SR 32, various immunities for DR 0).

 

[Pants]

Statwise, Complete Arcane has the Elemental Monoliths, that appear to be a 3.5 conversion of Monte's Imix (and the equivalent of the other princes) from RTTOE. Although personally, I would go ahead and add a Divine Rank of 0 to the Monoliths to really get the flavor of the various elemental princes. Primary game play difference would be making the Elemental Princes mostly immune to magic (SR 32, various immunities for DR 0).

Actually, I really don't think they are the same at all, nor were they meant to be.

As for the whole Queen of Chaos bit, Rod of Seven Parts says she was a being native to Limbo that moved to the Abyss.

 

[BOZ]

There is no "choosing" what is canon and what isn't. Everything that is first-party (and, IMO, second-party) is canon; in the event of two products that present irreconcilable differences (and don't get divorced ), then you go with the more recent product.

i don't know about that... sometimes there is far more truth in the older source, and the guys trying to rewrite history may not be doing a very good job of it...

regardless, one should always feel free to retain the option of making up one's own mind.